Bulldog (Microsoft)
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Bulldog is the code name for an upcoming Master Data Management (MDM) product from Microsoft, which will ship as a part of the future revision of the Microsoft Office suite, installing either as a standalone application or as a part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server installations.[1] Bulldog is the rebranding of the Stratature MDM product titled +EDM, which Microsoft acquired in June 2007. Bulldog will be architecturally similar to +EDM, with increased integration with other Microsoft applications as well as some new features.[1]
Bulldog is planned to be made available with the next release of Microsoft Office suite. Currently, packaging or pricing is still undecided. A CTP of the software is planned to be released in the third quarter of 2008. However, a technological preview is planned for release in February 2008. That release will be virtually identical to the Stratature release of +EDM, without any of the features added by Microsoft.[1]
The successor to Bulldog is codenamed "Greenwich", which will include major changes to the analytical and transactional capabilities, as well as better integration with other products. [2]
[edit] Overview
Like other MDM products, Bulldog aims to create a centralized data source and keep it synchronized, and thus reduce redundancies, across the applications which process the data. With this aim, Bulldog integrates with end user applications like Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, while other backend technologies like Windows Communication Foundation and ADO.NET Entity Framework.[1]
Sharing the architectural core with Stratature +EDM, Bulldog uses a Microsoft SQL Server database as the physical data store. It is a part of the Master Data Hub, which uses the database to store and manage data entities.[1] It is a database with the software to validate and manage the data, and keep it synchronized with the systems that use the data.[3] The master data hub has to extract the data from the source system, validate, sanitize and shape the data, remove duplicates, and update the hub repositories, as well as synchronize the external sources.[3] The entity schemas, attributes, data hierarchies, validation rules and access control information are specified as metadata to the Bulldog runtime. Bulldog does not impose any limitation on the data model. Bulldog also allows custom Business rules, which are used to validate and sanitize the data entering the data hub, to be defined, which is then run against the data matching the specified criteria. All changes made to the data are validated against the rules, and a log of the transaction is stored persistently. Violations are logged separately, and optionally the owner is notified, automatically. All the data entities can be versioned.[1]
Bulldog allows the master data to be categorized by hierarchical relationships, such as employee data are a subtype of organization data. Hierarchies are generated by relating data attributes. Data can be automatically categorized using rules, and the categories are introspected programmatically. Bulldog can also expose the data as Microsoft SQL Server views, which pulled by any SQL-compatible client. It uses a role-based access control system to restrict access to the data. The views are generated dynamically, so they contain the latest data entities in the master hub. It can also push out the data by writing to some external journals. Bulldog also includes a web-based UI for viewing and managing the data. It uses AJAX in the front-end and ASP.NET in the back-end.[1]
Bulldog will also include certain features not available in the Stratature +EDM product. It will gain an Web service interface to expose the data, as well as an API, which internally uses the exposed web services, exposing the feature set, programmatically, to access and manipulate the data. It will also integrate with Active Directory for authentication purposes. Unlike +EDM, Bulldog will support Unicode characters, as well as support multilingual user interfaces.[1]
